


where the dark things are

by Anonymous



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: 'deal with the devil', Alternate Universe, Dark Fantasy, Demons, Dream Analysis, Dream Eaters, Horror, M/M, Sleep Paralysis, minor blood, shark attack in dreams
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 15:27:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29952021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Jeongin never slept.Perhaps for that, he was thankful.orwhere jeongin is a dream eater, feeding off human's dreams his sole purpose in life. minho is human plagued with nightmares, offered a dangerous deal one night he cannot take the nightmares any longer
Relationships: Lee Minho | Lee Know/Yang Jeongin | I.N
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9
Collections: AGIBBANG FEST





	where the dark things are

**Author's Note:**

> #0090: Jeongin is a dream eater, a being that feeds off other people’s nightmares. Minho just so happens to be plagued by nightmares constantly to the point where he can’t have one peaceful night, and as such, Jeongin seeks the boy out and offers his services to him. It seems like a well-meant offer, but little does Minho know the consequences of the pact he’s about to make....

The constant rise and fall of ocean waves crashing down onto the bluff below Minho was the only thing fueling his senses. His vision was taken from him, unable to see the confines of the four wooden walls closing him in, only able to feel the scratchy surface and the splinters poking into his skin as he moved his hands over the roof of the wooden box.

_A coffin, call it for what it is Minho._

While inside of the coffin, muffled voices came from above him, drowned out over the sound of the waves which only grew louder in his ears. It became deafening, only realising his coffin was being moved when he could feel the spray of the sea drip through the small slits in the wood. 

“Hey! Let me out!” 

He kept trying to scream, though no noise could make its way out. He was mute, couldn’t say a word yet opened his mouth to let out silent screams as his coffin was thrown off the side of the cliff. 

When the wood hit the water he felt splinters pierce through his back, the force of the fall feeling as though he’d been biffed off a building and hit concrete instead of water.

Heavy rocks appeared around his body, he couldn’t see them but he could feel their soft surface as they began to weigh him down even further inside the confines of the coffin. 

The wooden box closing him in sank slowly, the air from his lungs being replaced with salty ocean water. He gurgled around his screams, slowly suffocating as the water filled his organs responsible for his life. He thrashed and billowed around inside the coffin, fingers clawing so hard at the wooden walls that he couldn’t see the blood begin to pool around him. 

Minho no longer felt alone. 

He could sense something else was in the water with him, stalking him like he was prey. 

The coffin was nudged by an unseen force and Minho’s vision went completely black with no prior warning. Before he knew it a strength unlike any other was clamping down around his waist, the coffin no longer holding him safe. 

He groaned as sharp teeth ripped into him, shaking him in the water like he was nothing.

Tearing him apart.

☽ ☾

Minho woke up with a jolt.

He clutched his throat as he gasped for air, feeling around with his free hand for his surroundings - the sheets of his bed a welcome anchor to the present, to _reality._

These nightmares were getting out of control.

They felt so real every single time that Minho _truly_ thought he was being eaten alive by the shark that had hunted him down. Chills radiated down his spine as he forced himself out of bed, clammy feet sticking to the wooden floor as he scampered into the kitchen for a glass of water. He balanced himself over the sink as he took a long chug, the liquid slipping down his throat so eerily similar to the water he was drowning on in his dreams.

Minho replenished the glass with more cold water and took it through to his bedroom with him. He slumped into his desk chair and placed the glass on the straw coaster he kept next to his desktop computer. He booted up the hard drive, squinting as the screen came to life in the darkness of his room. He waited as his computer finished setting itself up and the first thing he did when it fully loaded was open up chrome and navigate his way to Reddit.

The website had become his lifeline the past two weeks. Ever since the nightmares had started he'd been unsettled, partly due to his disrupted sleep but because of the content of his dreams, because he could smell, feel and touch everything and wake up remembering it so vividly as though it had actually happened.

The _'Nightmare Analysis'_ subreddit had quickly become his safe haven, and as he started typing out the details of his dream he felt instantly more at ease, and the incessant tapping of his knee against the underside of his desk began to subside. As he clicked post he took a deep breath and reached for his glass once more. 

He couldn't understand why the nightmares had even started. 

He hadn't undergone anything traumatic, he was a relative of the sane mind and he didn't have a stressful enough occupation to cause such hellish dreams. It was perplexing, it was horrifying and Minho was starting to get more worried by the day. 

Posting to the subreddit was the most instant relief he could find, but as he started growing drowsy the fear of another nightmare had him wide awake and ready to start his day at two in the morning. 

He kept refreshing his notifications, waiting for the first comment to roll in.

Finally, when the little red circle popped up he clicked into his post to see a new comment from an anonymous user.

**Shark attacks in dreams generally foreshadow lurking danger or misfortune, accidents or illness, and mostly pretty bad luck.**

**Side note: be careful who you put your trust in!**

**Hoping the best for you.**

Minho scrunched his eyes as he lost himself in his thoughts. 

_What are you trying to warn me about, he pondered to himself._

Ever since the nightmares started he hardly left the house except for work - which he now opted to do from home due to the migraines that had started to begin from his disordered sleeping patterns. Fear and suspicion would crawl up on him when he least expected it, and for a split second, he thought he saw a flash of white, possibly bleached hair in his peripheral vision.

“You’re losing it Min,” he whispered to himself, switching on his lamp as he turned off his monitor - unable to be completely alone in the dark for much longer. 

☽ ☾

Jeongin never slept.

Perhaps for that, he was thankful.

After so many years of taking away the most terrifying scenes that a human's mind could come up with, he couldn't think of anything worse to do. He was happy with absorbing others' dreams, creating fear and terror as he took the form of what terrified the human he was feeding off the most. The humans had called it _sleep paralysis_ \- but little did they know it was something much more, that the being behind the phenomenon was far more sinister than anyone could ever imagine. He was grateful that sleep wasn't the one thing to recharge him, and that it wasn't his essence to live.

Dreams on the other hand...

His entire life purpose was to feed off human nightmares. 

It was the sole task that Dream Eater's had to conduct to live. Failure to do so... well, the dreams they once fed off would become their own personal hell, forever trapped in the depths of their charge's doing. One could call it torture, another could call it karma or payback - a taste of what they put their humans through.

Jeongin was resting in his quarters of the palace that the Dream Eater's resided in. It was one layer of the Earth above Hell, a reminder of how lucky they were to have lesser demons have their backs and not be targeted themselves being so close to the Hellmouth. There was a slow round of taps against his door and Jeongin raised his head to watch Chan enter his room.

The Dream Eater looked disheveled and more than that - _worried._

"What happened to you?" Jeongin asked.

Chan’s eyes shook as he whispered, "Another one perished."

Jeongin grunted, not liking the uneasiness that crawled up his spine.

"How? Why?"

"He let himself starve for too long... wanting to see if the rumors about the desperation were true."

Jeongin felt hot, the anger boiling in his veins throbbing against his grey-toned skin.

"He grew sick like everyone warned Jeongin... I know we are demons and all but he looked like something else entirely. I thought he might actually feed off _me._ "

Chan was shaken up and Jeongin suspected that this was only the tip of the iceberg of what he was about to divulge.

"H-He went to his charge's house and, oh god Jeongin I just-"

Jeongin placed his hands on the other demon's shoulders, trying to ground him. Jeongin would be lying if he said it wouldn't worry him, that a part of him didn't want to know what had transpired.

"He tore him apart Jeongin. It was a bloodbath, an actual fucking bloodbath. I know that this can happen especially if we make a deal with our charge but the state of this poor human... Jeongin he didn't deserve it, he hadn't even fully ripened and-"

Jeongin pulled Chan into his chest in a warm embrace, tightening his arms around his back as much as he could possibly manage. 

Yes, they were demons and would kill a human from time to time but events like this would shake any of them up - at the ferocity and dangers that came with not feeding often enough. They were a contradictory species of demon but they had rules they upheld, and the demon that did the actions that Chan spoke of?

They broke every single rule that the Dream Eater's existed by.

Their job was to make their charges go insane, being trapped in their minds from the insanity they would cause by offering them a way out after a prolonged time of sleep paralysis. They’d absorb the energy of the nightmares, fuelling their souls with the inevitable life force that would be consumed by their darkest fears.

"He was an idiot. He never should have done that and it will never happen to you if that's what you are really worried about."

Chan gently slapped Jeongin's back as he pulled his way out of the hug, daggering his eyes at Jeongin.

"I can smell it on you, Chan." He offered the Dream Eater a sympathetic smile. He couldn't help it that it was one of the perks of being the kind of demon he was - being able to smell emotion not only human but on their fellow demons.

"Our kind are so nosy without meaning to be and I hate it," Chan huffed.

As Chan slid over to the door and rubbed his eyes one last time, he let Jeongin in one the second reason why he had come to his room so late.

"There's a new charge waiting for you as well," Chan sniffed.

☽ ☾

Jeongin shifted down the halls, greeting fellow Dream Eaters that were returning to their quarters from the charge room. 

The charge room is where all potentially suited humans were presented to each demon, in a shallow murky dish of dream dust. Jeongin was used to dipping his head inside of the not quite liquid substance, closing his eyes and letting the vision of his charge give him access to their sleeping quarters.

There in the onyx sparkling dust was the image of an orange-haired man, drenched in sweat as he woke up from a nightmare. The poor guy seemed to be used to it by the way he sighed, wandered over to his computer, and pulled up a dream analysis web page. It was almost comical to Jeongin how much it seemed to be a routine - how easy it would be to offer this young man his services. 

All Jeongin can think about is how ripe he must be. ****

☽ ☾

When Minho shot awake from the nightmare, everything in his room felt… _off._

He was busy trying to recollect his breath, doing the breathing techniques someone on Reddit had recommended to him. It was when he glanced at his dresser that he saw the shadow of a man in the far corner of the room.

He tried to scream but nothing came out, he could only curl himself against his headboard as the man emerged from the shadows he so easily blended in with. It was then that Minho noticed the familiar bleached hair, the sight that he kept catching glimpses of all day.

 _This is a dream, another nightmare, not fucking real. You’ll wake up soon,_ he promised himself as he peeled his eyes open in the man’s direction. 

“Lee Minho?” the man asked him.

Minho was perplexed. 

He should be terrified - and he is, but this man was… not the usual type of terror that would plague his dreams. He was dressed in tight black attire, much like a uniform with lots of long strips of material dangling from the crooks of his limbs. 

“Your dreams have been such a pain haven’t they,” the man cooed, running a finger along the keyboard at Minho’s desk.

“A-and you’re just another one of t-t-them about to put me through some weird shit right?” Minho stammered, all confidence lost as he watched the man's eyes swirl with black glitter, mimicking a galaxy. 

He shifted seamlessly with the shadows, moving through the air like an apparition, to stand next to him as Minho curled further into his headboard of the bed. Jeongin rested a bone-cold hand on his bare, boiling shoulder, not bothered by the layer of slick sweat in the slightest.

“Oh quite the opposite actually,” Jeongin whispered.

Minho should have recoiled, but couldn’t understand why he felt such comfort from those words. 

“What if I told you I could take those dreams away,” Jeongin whispered, breath making Minho’s hair stand on his ear. He couldn’t resist the temptation, the allure that the white-haired man encompassed too much to not accept. 

He was just dreaming after all, _why not?_

“What would I have to do?”

“Let me in every night, I can take them all away as long as you let me stay here.” Jeongin pointed to his brain, to his own dreamless mind.

Minho let out a curt laugh, the absurdity of his dream finally letting him breathe a little lighter. 

“I think we have ourselves a deal,” Minho gulped as he shook the man’s hand, watching in awe as one of the long dangling strips of material wrapped around their wrists in union.

“It’s going to be a pleasure doing business with you Minho,” the man smiled, eyes twinkling like starlight as the endless galaxies that swam in them shone brightly through the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> kudos or comments are greatly appreciated and help me know i'm on the right track with the content i'm creating. they really make writer's days and thanks isn't enough to use to describe how much we appreciate it ♡
> 
> [links here upon reveals]


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